Overwhelmed Too

Nine days ago, I was still an out of work engineer.
Yesterday was my last day working at Brookfield Zoo.
Today, I'm in Dubuque, IA.

So yeah, it was a hectic week getting ready to start working out in Dubuque. My last week at the zoo went pretty well. My managers knew that I had a lot of stuff to get done so they let me go as early as possible on most days. Friday went by pretty quickly and at the end of it, I got to go to an employee only sneak peek at the sting rays. That was pretty cool. Overall my job at the zoo was pretty good. There were some things that were lousy about it, such as dealing with cranky people that thought they were more important than every other guest at the zoo, but I liked most of the people that I worked with. It was also nice to work outside on beautiful days. Overall, I'll miss working there, but I'm excited to be back working in my field. It's been a crazy week, and it's strange to be checking into a motel room and knowing that I'll be staying for a month, but now that I'm here, I'm looking forward to things slowing down a bit. Of course when starting at a new job, things usually aren't slow, but at least the moving is over...for now.

Overwhelmed

*sigh*

As Pat mentioned in his last entry, he was offered a job in Iowa. He starts on Monday. It's a bit overwhelming to have everything change in a span of a week. Not like we haven't been planning for this for a while now. I don't remember when exactly Pat started looking into options outside of the Chicago area, but ever since then we've known this could happen. Been hoping for it. But now that it has, it's just . . . well, I think overwhelming is the best word to describe it.

I mean, it's only Iowa. More than that, it's only Dubuque, which is right on the border between Iowa and Illinois. Right about 3 hours, according to Google. And I've put in a request to work to not work weekends anymore, so that I can actually spend those with my husband when he's home. Honestly, it's not the long distance thing that's got me worked up. Yeah, that part of it sucks, but it's nothing we haven't done before. It's just worrying over all the details. Me being without a car once he's gone. Trying to figure out when exactly I'll join him out there. And the prospect of starting the job hunt all over again . . . sucks. Ideally I could see about transferring to a Borders out there, but "ideally" hasn't worked out for us so well in the past.

I'm trying to keep my mind busy with other things and not think about any of this. Clearly, that's not going so well.

I can has job!

After a waaaaaay too long dry spell, I was offered an engineering position this morning. The picture above is pretty much how I felt all day. That's right. After living with the in-laws for exactly 4 weeks, I will be moving out to Dubuque, IA. I will probably be living in a hotel for the first month and then move to an apt after I get the lay of the land over there with Charleen following me out there a few months later. We'll see how things go. A lot is still up in the air, but for now I'm just tremendously relieved to finally have a job in my field. I'm looking forward to getting our lives back on track.

Blech

So I know that being out in the rain isn't actually supposed to make you catch a cold, but it sure did seem that way this week.

First things first: we did move successfully. We couldn't get quite as much into the storage unit as we wanted, but we got more in there than we'd hoped, leaving not too much to be stored either in closets or attics until we're back in our own place. And the bedroom is definitely "extra-cozy" with Pat and I tripping over each other when we're both in here, but hey, you do what you have to do.

The one thing that didn't go smoothly with the move was the weather. Both Saturday and Sunday were rainy, crappy days, so of course starting on Monday I've been feeling sick all week. Cough, sore throat, congestion (and that fuzzy sense of hearing that comes with congestion). I was sneezing as well, though the upside is that I was able to get rid of that by taking Claritin. All other symptoms, however, are going strong, to the point that I called in to work today and, after falling back asleep, slept until noon. My mom has pretty much the same symptoms, which she's blaming on the drinking game we all played on Friday ( . . . long story), as drinking tends to lower her immune system, which of course is what being out in the rain actually did to me. So whether she gave something to me or I gave something to her, who knows. But basically it sucks. Pat's mom is worrying that I have bronchitis, but I'm hoping that after giving myself today to rest (something I haven't had the luxury of doing yet this week), that I'll feel better.

Moving

Well, the weekend is upon us, and . . . yeah. Our place sort of looks like we're moving soon, but definitely doesn't look like we're moving tomorrow. I suppose I should go and remedy that rather than sitting here typing a blog entry, but it's just so overwhelming. And there are a lot of factors making this move more difficult than times we've moved in the past, the biggest thing being that everything is being split up into two locations. The majority of our stuff is going into storage, while certain key items are coming to my parents' with us. Unfortunately, the stuff that is easiest to pack is the stuff that's coming with, and everything else is just . . . there. Personally I'm ready to just drag a dumpster under our window and toss all of it, but I think that would be frowned upon by a certain significant other.

I'm just so frustrated, and ready for all this to be over.

Slumber Party!

Okay, so Pat was recently reminiscing about high school (sort of), so of course about a week after that, I go to an old school slumber party. Well, old-school aside from the fact that we had alcohol and half of us were married. But whatever.

It was a ton of fun. Would have been even more fun had I actually been able to spend the night, but since I was working the next day I decided I'd rather go home and sleep in my own bed. It's times like these I really wish I had a normal M-F schedule like everyone else. As it was, I couldn't even have one drink (because, regardless of the fact that one drink barely makes me tipsy, it WILL give me a mini-hangover the next day, which really sucks . . . not that I'm the kind of person who needs alcohol to have fun, but it would still be nice not to worry about it).

Lynsey actually brought out the game "Girl Talk," which I don't think I ever actually played back in the day, and which I still haven't played because we decided it was just too pointless for a group of 25+ women to play what is basically Truth or Dare (and all of the dares sounded pretty dumb anyway, even if we were the appropriate age). So we ended up playing some other games, my favorite of which was definitely what we've dubbed "Pictionaphone," or the alternate title, "Telephonary." I'm still not sure which I like best, but it was a fun game. As the names suggest, it's basically a combination of Pictionary and the Telephone game that kids play.

Everyone gets a small stack of scratch paper, as many pieces as there are people. Everyone writes down a name of a movie (well, we chose to go with movies, you could also do songs, TV shows, whatever, but movies works really well), then passes their stack of paper to the right. Next person looks at the name, and puts that paper in the back of the stack. Then on the next clear piece of paper they draw out a representation of the movie that was listed. Pass to the right again. That person looks at the picture, sticks it in back of the stack, and on the next clear paper writes what they think the drawing represents (without going back and looking at the original movie title). So, it may or may not be correct, but then the next person gets to draw their version of that title, and so on and so forth until everyone's stack makes it back around to them. Sometimes the original movie remains constant till the end, and sometimes . . . not so much. But it was really fun.

WoW is like High School

Two posts within a month of each other...I hope I don't break the internet. Also a quick note for anyone who may be reading this that doesn't already know. When I say "WoW" it is short for World of Warcraft. I know Charleen has linked to this blog from her facebook page, but I have no idea if anyone has actually followed that link here.

Anyway, let me explain about the title of the post. I loved High School. It didn't require a lot of responsibility on my part, it was fun, and I had a lot of great friends. WoW was much the same for me, and lately I've been missing it. I apologize for the random rambling that this post will likely have. Charleen is the writer, not me.

Especially right now, that lack of responsibility part is something I miss. Charleen and I are 26. We (or at least I am) are still in that phase where High School and College don't feel like they happened all that long ago and real life and responsibility suck. The current economy isn't helping that last part. While I really look forward to owning a house and working on projects and the yard on my free time, right now real life responsibility is pretty sucky. As Charleen mentioned, we're going to be moving in with her parents. Since currently I'm supposed to be the primary bread winner, the feeling of failure is weighing down on me pretty hard. (ok, I could go on, but I'm cutting this rant off right now) Back to what I was originally talking about. WoW was nice. You didn't have any more responsibility than you decided to take on. The biggest responsibility that you really should have in WoW personal courtesy. If you start an instance run, make sure that you have the time to do so with the exception of stuff that comes up out of the blue. High school was pretty much the same. There was homework of course, but the only extra responsibility that you had was extra curricular activities that you decided to take on.

Kind of going along with the responsibility thing is just how much fun WoW was for me. Right now I could really use that kind of escape. I loved running instances or doing quests. Heck, even fishing grew on me. (and that was before they made all the big changes to it) But I think the biggest fun aspect for me was the fact that you could make yourself goals and always be working towards something (also one of Blizzard's biggest hooks for a subscription based game). I loved the long term project of it. As far as console games go, RPGs like Final Fantasy or Zelda have always been my favorite, but as much fun as they are, there's always that part of me that was sad when a great game came to an end. WoW didn't have that downside. Right now I'm getting my game fix with a couple of facebook games and by replaying some console games that I have, but they'll never be as complete a game as WoW.

Finally the thing I miss the most about WoW (and high school) is talking almost every day to those great friends that I made. I'm terrible at keeping in touch with people that I don't see every day. The original point of this blog was as a way to keep in touch and keep those friends up to date on what was going on in our lives. It's nice that some of them like Wulfa and Dammerung have a blog that they post on all the time. I especially love seeing pictures of their kids 'cause they're so darn cute. :) But reading about someone's life and talking with them about it is very different and I miss that. I miss hanging out online and just chatting with folks like Wulfa, Dammerung, Shrinn, Fal, and Ishvi to name just a few. I don't know, when I get back into an Engineering job again, I may start playing WoW again, but right now I just feel...I don't know if it's the right word or not but...nostalgic. (ok, just looked up the definition:a yearning for the past, often in idealized form. It's exactly the right word)

And since I was just taken away from my computer for a bit, my train of thought has been completely derailed. Something about feeling the same kind of nostalgia for WoW as I do for High School for a lot of the same reasons. At least I'm posting again, right? Lets see if I can aim for a second post inside of a week next time.

Moving Woes

So, we're moving in about a month. Which would be a traumatic enough experience on its own (because, no matter how many times I've done it, moving always is) but made even more traumatic by the fact that we're moving in with my parents.

Let me first say that we hope this move will be very temporary, and how grateful we are that my parents are willing to take us in. However . . . fitting an entire apartment worth of stuff into my old bedroom is simply not going to happen. So, in addition to the pain of moving, and the awkwardness of running home to Mom and Dad after three years of marriage, we have to figure out how the hell we're going to fit our entire lives into one 11x12 bedroom.

Clearly we will be renting a storage space for the majority of our furniture, everything in our kitchen and bathroom, and probably a good chunk of our personal belongings as well. It's that last part that's causing the most trouble though. When it comes to all our "stuff" . . . what do we pack away into storage, not to come out again until we are back in our own place? It's kind of like deciding what to bring to your dorm room your first year of college, only harder.

Right now I'm transferring a lot of the recipes I regularly use onto nice little 4x6 index cards, so that I can bring a stack of index cards rather than a stack of cookbooks. And honestly, I don't know how much cooking I'm going to be doing anyway, but I'd still rather not lose access to all that information. Unfortunately not everything in my life can be so easily condensed.

The most recent blow in this whole situation, though, is the definitive decision that Slider won't be coming with us. We'd been worrying this whole time about whether or not our cat and my parents' dog would get along, completely forgetting that my brother (who is also moving home after being on his own for a year) is allergic to cats. So, while we knew that Slider might not be able to join us, it ended up being for a completely different reason than we thought. Instead, Pat's parents will be taking him for the duration. They live just a couple blocks away, so it's not like I can't see him whenever. But it's still going to be hard.

This next month is going to be incredibly stressful.

Left Foot, Right Foot . . .

Okay, so Pat is all sad that he hasn't posted in over six months. I haven't been doing much better. But, as I mentioned to him, I could post a lot more often than I do. I'm always thinking, "Hey, I should put that in the blog," and then I just don't. So, we're both going to try to get better about that. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway, last week I did something kind of stupid.

Important thing to know here, for those who don't actually know me: I'm overweight. Technically I am considered obese, but I don't like to think of myself as such since that brings to mind a certain visual image that I don't think I quite fall into, but vanity aside, yes, I am obese. I'm 5'3" and just over 200 lbs. I wear size 18 jeans. At my last doctor visit I was told that I'm actually in remarkably good health considering how overweight I am (blood pressure, cholesterol, etc are all fine) but then I'm still young. So, yes, I do plan to lose weight and get in shape, but like so many other things it just hasn't happened.

At any rate, now that the weather is turning nicer again, we've been going on walks whenever possible (though since I stand all day at Borders and come home pretty sore, we only go on my days off), I'm trying to control portions, drink water instead of sugary drinks . . . you know, baby steps. My mom also struggles with her weight, and recently she's been taking her days off (which is every other Friday) to visit my grandma and use her Wii Fit. About a month ago she invited me out there to join them.

The great thing about Wii Fit (I SO want one) is that it's a really easy way to track your progress. Before you start doing the exercises it measures your weight and BMI, compares it to last time, and you can set goals for yourself, for losing or gaining weight. So anyway, I go out there with her the first time, create my little Mii character, play some of the games, and set a 2-week goal for myself. Two Fridays later, I tag along again, and lo and behold I've lost 5.5 pounds over those two weeks! Sweet!

So, two more weeks go by, and unfortunately my work schedule has changed so that I'm working on Fridays now, so I can't go with again. This was last week. And now we finally get to the point of my story.

Thursday was an absolutely gorgeous day. And I was thinking about the fact that I wasn't going to get to work out this week (not that once every two weeks is really anything to fuss about, but I was still looking forward to it), and Pat was working, so I was just hanging around the apartment by myself. And I was thinking that I should get out and take a walk, just in case we didn't go for one that evening, and even if we did, two walks in one day wouldn't be a bad thing. But THEN, I came up with my stupid idea. Instead of just taking a quick walk around the neighborhood, I decided I was going to walk to the library. Which, according to Google Maps, is 2.6 miles from my place. 2.6 miles there. 2.6 miles back.

Back in high school I once walked from my house to the library, which is (again, according to Google) 2.2 miles. It felt like it took me forever, and if I recall correctly I ended up calling my parents for a ride home 'cause I just couldn't do it again. But that was before I went to college, and got used to walking all over the place all the time. Then again, college was three years ago.

Back and forth like that for about twenty minutes in my head before deciding to just suck it up and do it. It's really not that far, I decided, and it certainly wasn't going to kill me. Worst case scenario, if I was so much of a wimp that I couldn't walk home, I could just hang out at the library all day until Pat got off work and have him swing by to pick me up.

So I did walk all the way there. Took me just under an hour. Dropped off all my books, got a few new ones . . . sat around reading for about 45 minutes to recharge my legs . . . and then turned around and walked back. I was very surprised that it took the same amount of time to walk home. I was expecting to be huffing and puffing the whole way back, taking way longer now that I was so tired, but I guess my rest break did its work.

And honestly, I felt really really good. Tired, but really good. Until I woke up the next morning and my legs were KILLING me, and swore that I'd never voluntarily walk that far again. Well, now it's a gorgeous day again after a crummy weekend, and I'm actually thinking of making this a weekly trip. I go to the library about once a week anyway, why not get some exercise in? Pat tells me I should have stretched out before and I would have been fine. Fine may be an exaggeration, but I'm sure it would have helped, had I thought of it.

So anyway . . . we'll see. I'm not going to go today, and the forecast is actually calling for rain on Thursday (these are my only two days off this week) but we'll see what happens. If nothing else, I've taken back my vow of never doing it again.

Bad Fires are Bad

Ok, so this blog was my idea. I suppose I should post on it every once in a while. (ok, I just checked and it's been over six months since I posted...I fail...) Anyway...

Oh right, the title of my post. I like fire. I think it's fascinating. I like "playing" with bonfires when hanging out with friends or especially when going camping. I like the smell of burnt matches. I always loved being the one to get to light the candles at dinner when I was growing up. Those are good fires. Fires where parts of buildings are burning, however, are bad fires...

So Saturday, February 27th was a fairly uneventful day. I don't think I worked. I got some cleaning done around the apt. Charleen worked. She got home from Borders at about 10:30. We went to bed early. Again, uneventful.

Sunday morning at about 12:30 AM, there's a loud bang as our front door is busted open by firemen. They barge in and start yelling to get out of the building because there's a fire. Charleen and I scrambled to put on some extra clothing and shoes. I looked around and couldn't find the cat and was told to leave him. (grrr...) Found out later that he had run back and hidden under the bed. he doesn't usually do that.

Anyway, the fire was in the apt across the hall and one door down from us. The sprinkler system in that unit went off and alerted the fire dept. and it was out within about 5-10 minutes of them arriving. That's where the 3 hour wait began. Looking back on it now with a fully rested and rational mind, it makes sense that they needed to be sure to take the time to check that there were no more hot spots or any possibility whatsoever of a fire starting back up. At that early in the morning on a half hour of sleep and worrying about our cat still up in our apt and possibly running loose? Not so reasonable. After a bit and things had calmed down I did manage to get one of the firemen to check on Slider and he let us know that he was hiding under the bed and they had closed the bedroom door so he wasn't going to run away. That helped, but the next few hours were long and there were lots of questions about the girl who lived in the apt with the fire. And then there were even more questions about her boyfriend.

Finally at about 3-3:30 we were let back in to our apt and told to grab enough stuff for the next 4-5 days. Luckily both my parents and Charleen's parents live within about 20 minutes so we had somewhere to stay on short notice without waiting for the complex to arrange for us to be put up in a hotel. Thankfully no one was hurt, nothing besides our apt door was damaged, and we were able to get back into the building in a couple of days. It also was nice to know that Slider is perfectly capable of adapting to my parent's house after being there a few days.

So yeah, that was our excitement for the end of last month. I promise to post more often than once every 7 months...(hangs head in shame).